The innovation journey of new-to-tourism entrepreneurs

This study addresses the neglect of an overall analysis of the generative process of innovation in tourism studies. A conceptual framework draws together the fragmented literature on the innovation process which is visualized as a series of non-linear tasks from idea generation to diffusion. The conceptual framework is explored through a systematic analysis of the tourism innovation journey of 24 new-to-tourism entrepreneurs establishing start-ups in Spain. The analysis draws on the innovators’ narrations about their distinctive journeys to provide a more holistic picture of the innovation process. Drilling down into the sub-processes within each major task reveals the complexity of an innovation journey that is highly dynamic, uncertain, experimental and market-driven. A model of the innovation process is proposed based on the findings.     

Advertisement Disclaimer Speed and Corporate Social Responsibility: “Costs” to Consumer Comprehension and Effects on Brand Trust and Purchase Intention

It is not uncommon for advertisers to present required product disclaimers quickly at the end of advertisements. We show that fast disclaimers greatly reduce consumer comprehension of product risks and benefits, creating implications for social responsibility. In addition, across two studies, we found that disclaimer speed and brand familiarity interact to predict brand trust and purchase intention, and that brand trust mediated the interactive effect of brand familiarity and disclaimer speed on purchase intention. Our results indicate that fast disclaimers actually reduce brand trust and purchase intention for unfamiliar brands, suggesting that there are both economic and social responsibility reasons to use less rapid disclaimers for unfamiliar brands. Conversely, disclaimer speed had no negative effects on brand trust and purchase intention for highly familiar brands, presenting ethical tensions between economic interests (e.g., an efficient use of advertisement time) and social responsibility. We discuss the implications of our framework for advertising ethics, for corporate social performance, and for corporate social responsibility.     

Intransitive social indifference and the Arrow dilemma

This paper deals with a proposal by Frederic Schick for resolving Arrow’s dilemma of social choice. Schick challenges Arrow’s assumption that rational social indifference is transitive. It turns out, however, that even if we drop this assumption, we still face a dilemma as embarrassing as Arrow’s. Any constitution which satisfies the remaining conditions is a liberum veto oligarchy. This means a unique set of individuals carries any issue on which it is unanimous, and engenders social indifference on any issue which divides it. A formal statement and proof of this theorem follows an informal presentation of the result.     

Complete subset regressions

This paper proposes a new method for combining forecasts based on complete subset regressions. For a given set of potential predictor variables we combine forecasts from all possible linear regression models that keep the number of predictors fixed. We explore how the choice of model complexity, as measured by the number of included predictor variables, can be used to trade off the bias and variance of the forecast errors, generating a setup akin to the efficient frontier known from modern portfolio theory. In an application to predictability of stock returns, we find that combinations of subset regressions can produce more accurate forecasts than conventional approaches based on equal-weighted forecasts (which fail to account for the dimensionality of the underlying models), combinations of univariate forecasts, or forecasts generated by methods such as bagging, ridge regression or Bayesian Model Averaging.     

Book Review

This paper discusses partial approaches to trade liberalization, such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group's Early Voluntary Sector Liberalization (EVSL) proposal and the "zero-for-zero" approach. Distortions to resource allocation and global markets that might result from partial liberalizations are discussed, and parallels drawn to the possible trade diversion impacts and welfare losses of regional liberalization and tariff escalation. A global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is used to provide some numerical illustrations of the issues with respect to international trade in grains, oilseeds, and related processed products.